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Live performances and conversations in which artists talk about their work, their process, and themselves. Genre-blind but open-eared. Hosted by John Schaefer.
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Elizabeth And The Catapult Takes on Connection and Loneliness
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35:31
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Elizabeth Ziman is a classically-trained pianist, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who leads the long-running indie band Elizabeth And The Catapult. Her new album is sincerely, e – a wry, poignant, affecting response to the pandemic, mostly centered around her home’s piano (which happens to belong to Rob Moose, violinist, arranger, and…
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LNZNDRF (members of The National and Beirut) Is All About The Musical Journey
38:43
38:43
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LNZNDRF is a band composed of Scott and Bryan Devendorf of The National, and Ben Lanz and Aaron Arntz of Beirut. They improvise their CAN-influenced drone-fuzz psych jams, then edit and structure them into long-form songs, with or without vocals. With pieces named for an isolated 1000 year-old tree and the changing climate and topography of the Xer…
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The Altin Gün Experience: Turkish-Folk Meets Psych-Funk-Rock
30:18
30:18
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Amsterdam-based Altin Gün plays songs rooted in traditional Turkish folk tunes and Anatolian rock that have fallen down the rabbit hole of psychedelic funk, combining baglama/saz riffs, vocal melodies, fuzzy bass, wah-wah guitars and analogue organs. On their latest, Yol (Road), the band (whose name means “golden day”, sort of like a rent party inv…
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Rokia Traoré: The Malian Singer Showcases 'Beautiful Africa' (Archives)
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23:49
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It's impossible not to be transported by Rokia Traoré's voice and unique adaptation of rock. The daughter of a diplomat, Traoré spent her childhood traveling to Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, and France, and her travels exposed her to jazz, classical, Indian music and rock. Those early transformative experiences especially translated into her 2013…
CARM is the work of CJ Camerieri, trumpeter and French horn player of the band yMusic, and the result of a nickname earned in the midwest. On CARM’s self-titled debut, his original songs toe and test the boundary lines between jazz, classical, pop, and the timeless sounds of Ennio Morricone. There are both wordless songs focused on the trumpet, and…
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Grandbrothers, Messing Around With Grand Pianos Since 2012
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38:58
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Minimalism, classical music, and electronic dance music all come together in the pulsating music of the German-Swiss duo Grandbrothers. Using live processing of the piano (the insides and all) as its primary source, the duo creates an irresistible groove under the influence of electronic dance music. The Dusseldorf-based duo Grandbrothers’ ("Messin…
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Django Django's Hazy Art-Pop Is of a Modern Vintage
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29:48
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Django Django is a quartet of British art-psych rockers who make hazy jangly electro-art-pop that hearkens to earlier times – say the 1960’s 70’s, 80’s - and the sounds of today. Their songs veer from lo-fi bedroom creations, three-part harmony-driven sweet crooner delights, to space-rock flavored sexy sax solos that tease deep house music bangers.…
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Las Palabras Finds The Words In Charming Minimalistic Tunes
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28:42
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Las Palabras is the plural-named solo project of Rafael Cohen, of the dance-punk band !!! (pronounced chk chk chk). Cohen, a Brooklyn-based musician by way of Washington DC (his band El Guapo was on Dischord Records), studied with Anthony Braxton in school, and lived in Mexico City until he was 10. In Las Palabras, (a Spanish phrase for “The Words”…
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Aaron Lee Tasjan Is What Folk-Glam Might Sound Like
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Ohio-born, now Nashville-based Aaron Lee Tasjan makes up songs and plays guitar, mixing up folk, glam rock, psychedelia, and trenchant social commentary on his newest album, Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! Which may or may not be “autobiographical to a fault.” He takes a deep dive into classic pop music and glam rock, deflects comparisons to Marc Bolan and…
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Songwriter Langhorne Slim Re-Discovers Creative Joy To Banish Anxiety, Addiction
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After 15 years and 9 albums of roots-rockin’ goodness, the songs dried up for Langhorne Slim. But after dealing with addiction and an anxiety disorder, the music returned, and he captures it on the new LP Strawberry Mansion. He joins us to discuss the album and plays some of those songs for us. Set list: Panic Attack, Sugar Plum, Last One Standing,…
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The Quartet ETHEL Champions New Music, At a Distance
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26:18
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The New York string quartet ETHEL has been championing new music from often surprising corners of the music world for years. For this edition of the podcast, ETHEL plays new works by Lebanese violinist and composer Layale Chaker, joyful and eyeball-singeing electronic music by composer Dan Friel, and a piece by and with rock star Todd Rundgren. Als…
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Scottish Songwriter James Yorkston: Having Fun and Trying New Things
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40:20
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Scottish singer, songwriter, and occasional novelist James Yorkston is a natural storyteller and a member of the Yorkston/Thorne/Khan group, a power trio of sarangi, double bass, and guitar. His latest album is a spontaneous collaborative record with The Second Hand Orchestra, a group led by Swedish music producer and bandleader, Karl-Jonas Winqvis…
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Gary Clark Jr.: Reinvigorating The Blues (Archives)
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In the time since Gary Clark Jr.'s 2012 major label debut, Blak And Blu, he's played with Mick Jagger and blues legend B.B. King for the President at the White House, opened for The Rolling Stones, and played with Alicia Keys and The Roots. He's since released both 2015's The Story of Sonny Boy Slim and the 2019 album, This Land, which ranges from …
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Trumpeter Keyon Harrold's Vibrant Tunes Offer Strength & Courage (Archives)
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35:48
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Trumpeter, singer, and composer Keyon Harrold has played with Beyoncé, Common, Erykah Badu, Rihanna, Eminem, D’Angelo and the Vanguard, LL Cool J, and Maxwell, to name a few. On his 2017 album, The Mugician, (a play on musician & magician), the Ferguson, MO-raised, NYC-based Harrold returned to his own music, with the help of a few friends and past…
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Metric: What Happens in Vegas... (From the Archives)
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While writing the music for what would become Metric's 2015 record, Pagans in Vegas, front-woman Emily Haines traveled to Nicaragua and Spain, while guitarist Jimmy Shaw holed up at home in Toronto and fiddled with the knobs on synthesizers and pedals. The result of this mashed-up approach to songwriting is an album with tight, taut songwriting, bu…
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The Gothic Tales of Dark Carnival Band, Dust Bowl Faeries
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37:28
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Goth cabaret band Dust Bowl Faeries have kept making music through The 2020 Plague. On their latest record, The Plague Garden, the songs draw from New Orleans Voodoo rituals, Eastern European music, traditional Yiddish folk song, and vaudeville. The band members play all sorts of instruments from accordion to singing saw, lapsteel guitar to ukulele…
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Surreal Art-Rock By Saxophonist Donny McCaslin (Archives)
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36:38
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Sax player and bandleader Donny McCaslin, who collaborated with David Bowie on Blackstar, freely mixes pop, jazz, electronica, and art-rock on his striking 2018 album, Blow., which sees the band moving into sonic terrain that shows even more of Bowie’s impact. It’s some daring sax-led badassery - a blast of concentrated, powerful, and wonderful pop…
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Tony Visconti Talks Four Decades of Bowie and 'Blackstar' (Archives)
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The following interview was conducted days before David Bowie's death at 69. David Bowie was 19 when he met producer Tony Visconti. In 2016, Bowie released his experimental-jazz-flecked studio album, Blackstar. Visconti co-produced it, just as he had produced dozens of the rock icon's records over the course of their more than forty year creative r…
Revisit spectral electronic songs by L.A. producer Katie Gately (in-studio) and old-time American music from singer, fiddler, banjo player, and scholar Jake Blount, performed remotely. Also, listen to Malian singer, songwriter, guitarist and actress Fatoumata Diawara, recorded in the Before Times, with her full band, in-studio. Then, there's percus…
Hear some of the best performances from the Soundcheck Podcast series from 2020, despite 2020. From the WNYC Studio, listen to the mighty and relentless groove of Brooklyn's funky Afrobeat band Antibalas, and the dark drone of "Dublin folk miscreants," Lankum. From elsewhere, there's also a tune from John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, who took i…
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Stewart Goodyear: A 'Nutcracker' for Flying Fingers (From the Archives)
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The phenomenal pianist Stewart Goodyear, known as both an improviser and composer, famously played all 32 of Beethoven's sonatas in one sitting, when he turned 32 years old. In predictably jaw-dropping fashion, Stewart then turned his electrifying powers to Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker,' with his own transcription of the complete ballet. (The albu…
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Celtic Harp Innovator Maeve Gilchrist Weav-Weav-Weaves Wonderful Things
34:17
34:17
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Scottish-born Maeve Gilchrist writes and plays new music for an old instrument: the Celtic harp, or Lever harp. Gilchrist is a curious innovator who has played, performed, and recorded with the prog-folk quartet DuoDuo and the Grammy-winning Silkroad Ensemble. In her own original music, some of it drawn from a folk and traditional music well, she h…
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Squarepusher: Upending Expectations Of Electronic Dance Music (Archives)
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34:11
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Squarepusher is the nom de disque of Tom Jenkinson, who makes electronic dance music. EDM is associated with a relentless four-on-the-floor dance beat; it's loud and brightly colored and definitely part of the pop realm. Squarepusher, on the other hand, makes music that rides over a skittish, often nervous set of rhythms; his music may be somewhere…
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Courtney Barnett, In The Greene Space (Archives)
31:14
31:14
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Courtney Barnett's songs are wild, shaggy and wordy, mixing witty, mundane, and sometimes heartbreaking observations with devastating self-assessment. And with a sound rooted in the slack jangle-rock of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Barnett delivers plainspoken lyrics and roll off the tongue as if she's thinking them up on the spot. You can h…
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Staten Island's The Budos Band Brings the Heavy (Archives)
25:27
25:27
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With its 2014 record Burnt Offering, The Budos Band seems to have spent many hours listening to bands like Black Sabbath, Pentagram, or Deep Purple on endless repeat. Their riffs and grooves are way heavier, and still it's clear that the Afrobeat force is still with them. Here the ensemble leans towards scorched earth guitar distortion, some bliste…
